SWNOVELS Chapter 47. Nightmare Fuel
DON’T BE CONFUSED. Nothing good ever came out from Cassandra’s presence. Sure, she might have just saved my life and proved herself to be a separate entity from me—huh, maybe those were good things, but that still didn’t make up for what she did that night.
It was one of the worst things I had ever seen her do.
Mackenzie froze. Sure enough, she couldn’t be confronted by two Cassandras. It was one Cassandra too many. Or perhaps, the face she made was the expression that she had made a grave mistake.
“Wait, you’re—” Mackenzie spluttered. “It can’t—How?”
“You brought this up yourself,” Cassandra said, tightening her grip around Mackenzie’s arm. “Negative thoughts fuel me. They make me stronger. Quinn and I are one and the same, and she was thinking about all sorts of things because of what you’ve done to her.”
I wanted to protest that Cassandra and I weren’t the same, at least I had stopped feeling that way recently. But I was so exhausted that I just crawled into a ball on the floor, quietly sobbing from the pain. As I did so, however, Cassandra began to look more… human? Solid? I didn’t know how to describe it, but aside from the supposed knife hilt protruding from the pocket of her skirt, she looked less like a character from a horror show. The skin on her hands wasn’t so ghastly pale anymore. There were red patches on her palm, and green lines marked her veins. Her sweater and long black skirt began to show hints of color, of the pinks and greens I often attached to my wardrobe.
She was looking more alive, more like a person, and less of the ghoul I had known her to be.
I thought about her words: Negative thoughts fuel me. Revealing that should have worked to my advantage. If thinking negatively made her the monster she was, then all I had to do was throw those thoughts away.
But it was difficult.
I couldn’t just think happy thoughts as Mackenzie and Cassandra lunged into battle. The latter pulled out her crooked knife, which brought me all sorts of bad memories. If I were not mistaken, that was the same weapon used to stab Rachael in the bathroom.
Maybe Cassandra was doing this on purpose. In the light of her duel with Mackenzie, she was the one fueling my negative thoughts, using them to make her stronger—if her claims were true, nonetheless, but I couldn’t find any proof that she was lying.
By the looks of it, compared to Julio, she was a harder opponent to beat. She was fast and light on her feet, and there were many close calls in which she could have slashed Mackenzie’s face. The blond-haired girl dodged my evil twin’s strikes by just a few inches, and each step grew clumsier and heavier. But by a string of luck, she was able to slice Cassandra’s cheek, putting a temporary halt on the battle.
Mackenzie panted, her fist shaking as she gripped her bloody knife. She grabbed Cassandra by the collar, shaking her violently.
“Who… who even are you?” she growled. “Why are you doing all this?”
Cassandra smiled, the cut on her cheek closing. It reminded me of how the Spanish House slowly rebuilt itself after an attack. Brick by brick, it pieced itself together again.
I knew Cassandra was powerful, but why did she have to have rapid healing properties?
“You already know the answers to that,” Cassandra chuckled. “For the longest time, you knew who I was, but you were too scared to admit it, too scared to come to terms with it…”
Mackenzie’s eyes widened. “No… It can’t…”
She roared, thrusting her dagger at Cassandra with all the force she could muster. For a second there, I thought Mackenzie would win. Despite what she’d done to me, I wanted her to, and when all of that was over, maybe this nightmare would finally come to an end. But in a twist of fate, Cassandra deflected her weapon with her knife, and the battle continued.
In the haze of the havoc, I noticed Julio enter the living room, limping as he left hand marks on the walls. Shaking his head, he stared at the ongoing fight in the living room. Whether or not he was going to intervene, I wasn’t sure. He eventually found me lying on the floor, stifling a gasp as he laid his eyes on me. He ran to my side, completely forgetting about his bad foot.
“Quinn,” he huffed. “What happened? Did Mackenzie—”
Before he could finish, Rachael groaned. She stood, wobbling from side to side as she clutched her head, where a bruise began to form near her eye. It didn’t take long for her to find me, and once she did, she placed a hand over her mouth.
“Oh God,” she gasped, gawking at me. “What—?”
“I need to get you guys out of here,” Julio said, directing his eyes at me. “Can you get up?”
I tried to do so, starting with my hands and knees, but I realized I was too dizzy from the pain. Julio reached out a hand. I took it, and he hoisted me up. That was when I noticed that his dagger was dripping with blood, and his hands and clothes were stained. I glanced at the corridor where his duel with Curtis happened.
I found myself not needing an explanation as to what had transpired back there.
But I knew how monsters worked. They regenerate after a certain amount of time. If we stayed around for too long, we would be stuck amidst the violence again.
As Julio led Rachael and me to the pool area, I made the mistake of glancing behind me, where Mackenzie and Cassandra continued to duel. Mackenzie swung her dagger vigorously and began reciting the most deadly dedication list I had ever heard.
“This is for the House,” she cried. “For Tamara. For Ms. Louise’s friends. For the Metropolis—”
To her horror, her dagger flew across the living room, skidding on the hard cold tiles. Cassandra swung her blade so vigorously that Mackenzie’s dagger had been pried out of her hand.
“The Metropolis?” Cassandra singsonged. “It was built on pain and misery, you know?”
Then, in a blink of an eye, she drove her knife into Mackenzie’s side.
I gasped, standing frozen as Mackenzie fell to the ground.
“Quinn, what’s—” I suppose Julio was about to ask what was wrong, but he soon found out why. He looked as shocked as I was, clenching his fists as Cassandra towered over his wounded comrade.
“It deserves to be destroyed,” Cassandra whispered. “And I’ll be there when it crumbles.”
Mackenzie glared at her. “You… you wouldn’t—”
And just like that, Cassandra disappeared, leaving nothing but deafening silence behind.
While everything felt still all around us, Julio approached Mackenzie at the corner of the living room, whose figure fluctuated between that of a teenage girl and that of a dove. She struggled to keep her head up straight, looking Julio in eye as if she were begging him to come closer. Alas, Julio was hesitant to take another step, and the two remained a few feet away.
I knew that Rachael and I should be running, getting the hell out of this place to find Ms. Louise, but both of us seemed drawn to what would happen next. The sensation was like being hooked on a suspense novel that you couldn’t put down, experiencing the illusory peace of anticipation.
This gripping yet intoxicating sense of dread led to Mackenzie opening her mouth to speak, asking Julio a question that would haunt everyone in the room:
“C—Cassandra…” she began. “Y—you and Rachael… Cassandra’s the Girl Beyond Bounds… isn’t she…?”
Julio took a while to respond. When he did, he spoke in a low voice. “Yes… She is…”
I thought of Ms. Louise’s story in the MacGuffin, how an entity called the Girl Beyond Bounds used to terrorize the forests outside the Metropolis. The way she talked about it made the girl sound like some kind of myth or lore, but now, we have Julio confirming her identity: Cassandra Diaz, my evil twin, the girl I supposedly replaced in the Author’s canon.
And now, she was also the Girl Beyond Bounds. What could all this mean?
Mackenzie managed a faint smile. “I—I’ve had my suspicions… for a while…” she said.
“You should have told me,” Julio said.
“I was afraid to… throw you off… You must stop her, Julio… you must…”
And then, her arms went limp. She stared at the ceiling, adorned with gems trailing down chandeliers. Her eyes became glassy as she watched them dance over her, knowing that they would never replace the stars that long disappeared from the Metropolitan sky.